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Recycle your biscuit and lolly bags at Coles
By: Michael Fox
Replas Bollards are to used as station markers for the self-guided walks through Mt Gravatt Conservation Reserve. So it is inspiring to learn that our plastic shopping bags as well as biscuit and lolly packets can now be recycled at our local Coles store.
Planet ARK blog post An Australian first – Free soft plastic recycling at Coles tells the story and lists the soft plastics we can now recycle rather than throw it in your Red Lid rubbish bin. Red Lid bins are gradually replacing the Green Lid general waste bins in line with the Australian Standard for waste bins.
Soft plastic you can recycle in the new Coles bins includes:
- Bread bags
- Biscuit packets
- Frozen food bags
- Rice and pasta Bags
- Confectionery packets
- Newspaper wrap (plastic)
- Plastic shopping bags
- Old green bags
Soft plastics like these cannot be recycled in the Yellow Lid household bins.
Mount Gravatt Environment Group 
May 28, 2013 at 9:03 am
This is great news, Michael, and I’m glad you posted it here in the M.E.G. wordpress.com web-site. I don’t think I would have heard about it, otherwise. (I don’t regularly visit Planet-Ark sites; also Planet-Ark is not even listed in the current White Pages.) There is no Coles store where I live (Mt. Gravatt Central), and I don’t often shop in other suburbs. However, I think I’ll now be saving up the approved kinds of sheet-plastic waste, to put into the new bins whenever I’m near a Coles store.
I should point out that the major supermarkets usually have bins outside their check-outs, where clean surplus plastic shopping-bags can be left. At least, IGA and Woolworths at Mt. Gravatt Central have them, and I know such bins have been around for a good many years. I’m relieved to know that other categories of sheet-plastic can at last be taken for recycling.
May 31, 2013 at 10:58 am
Glad you found it useful Noel. Recycling shopping bags has been available for some time but it was limited. It is much easier to take action when there is a broad range of plastics included. Now we simply have a bin lined with a shopping bag which takes all our soft plastics. The whole bundle then goes into the recycling next time we visit Coles.
Michael